Danskcolin: Monday October 25th 2021

08:00 Lois had a bad night - she's got a lot of work for the local branch of her sect on her shoulders at the moment, and I promise to help her this week if I can. The local sect leadership gets good value out of her - she's responsible for booking the visiting preachers, thanking them in detail after their talks, and - the worst bit - trying to get them commit to future preaching dates. My god!

I suggest texting to preachers instead of emailing them. Many of these guys are young and vague (as opposed to Lois and me, who are old and vague), but they all carry their phones about with them. Especially Brother Taylor.

a typical vague young preacher, looking at his mobile phone

(not Bro. Taylor haha!)

I suggest that she text these young guys rather than email them. I also suggest that she use her phone to photograph her list of "vacant" Sundays (the dates where she hasn't got a preacher booked), and then attach the photograph of these dates to her text-message, when she's pleading with the guys to make a future commitment. That's what a young person would do isn't it haha! Simples haha!!!

The local sect leadership also relies on Lois to do all the accounting of the money involved with financing the preaching to prospective new sect-members, plus all the payments they make to the dozens of Iranian Christian refugees living in the area, the ones who are waiting to hear if they can stay in the UK or not. They are mostly short of suitable winter clothing for living in our climate - what madness !!!!!

typical Iranian Christian refugees in the UK

It's quite a responsibility. And I think that's why Lois is sleeping badly at the moment. However, despite her bad night last night, she insists on performing her rota duties in our couple-relationship - it turns out that it's her turn today to get out of bed, go downstairs and bring us up 2 cups of tea, and also her turn to clean up after our Monday shower.

Poor Lois !!!!!

12:00 We do our daily session of "Danish" on the sofa, and then we go out for our walk on the local football field. Miraculously the clouds have dispersed a bit, and it's nice to see a bit of blue sky for once when we have our coffees, sitting on the so-called "Pirie bench".

Then, after lunch, we go up to bed for a "squirting session" - her twice-daily dose of olive-oil in her left ear.

While she's lying on her right side afterwards for the recommended 10 minutes, I look at my smartphone, and what do you know? There's an article that relates to doing things lying down, which is spooky!

I look at the quora forum website and I'm glad to see that one of our favourite pundits, Patricie Čapková (crazy name, crazy gal !!!) has been weighing in on the vexed subject of "Are there any cultures today where people normally eat lying down, like the ancient Romans did?".

Patricie writes, "It’s not practised nowadays. It used to be widespread among the high society of many cultures for official occasions and show-off occasions. The reclining was a status thing. It comes from the Near East. The first depiction of it comes from Assyria, in what’s known as the Garden Party Relief from Nineveh, but the couch seems to be just an alternative to the throne in this case.

"Until the Roman period, the Greeks usually depicted respectable women in sitting postures and prostitutes in reclining postures."

the "Garden Party" relief from Assyria

In the 'Garden Scene' above, we can see a few birds, which are okay, but also a locust (yuck!) in the trees, as well as (from left to right) two women holding napkins and fanning the queen with fly-whisks; they obviously had an insect problem, that's for sure! Just like Australia, which is spooky too.

Two more women are each bringing a dish, which they protect with a fly-whisk, towards the enthroned queen and reclining king, who are feasting in the arbour amid the vines, conifers and palms: these trees are unfortunately hung with the grisly trophies of victory, consisting of the head and hand of conquered enemy Teumman, king of Elam. Yuck! The hands of a woman drummer (not severed, which is nice) and a woman harpist can be seen amid the palms and conifers.

But overall, I have to say, what a mess !!!!!

And what a crazy world they lived in, in Assyria in those days !!!!!

Things were tidier in Etruria, however, as can be seen by these representations, where there are few, if any, annoying insects to keep at bay, which is nice!

some Etruscan representations of the custom of lying down to eat and drink

Fascinating stuff !!!!

I've done a quick google on my smartphone, but I can't find any ancient sculptures of drawings of people lying down to have a twice-daily squirt of olive oil in their ears, so I'm guessing this is a modern custom - but we'll see: the jury is still out on this one! I've at least got this Victorian drawing to refer to, in case I forget how to do it haha!

I hope this isn't getting a bit silly?

a reclining Victorian woman getting her squirt of olive oil in her ear

[What do you mean "I hope this isn't getting a bit silly!" Do you really need to ask? Just pull yourself together! - Ed]

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room intending to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom, but there's a problem with the laptop which is preventing her logging into the meeting. Luckily she's got zoom on her smartphone, so I fix her up with that.

I settle down on the couch and listen to the radio for a bit, a programme in the series "What's Funny About....?", which looks at various sitcoms and comedy sketch-shows, and tries to answer the question about why people find them funny, featuring interviews with the people who brought the shows on air in the first place.

Tonight it's all about "The Office" mockumentary sitcom from about 20 years ago, and the interviewee is Ricky Gervais, who created, co-wrote, and starred in, the series.

An interesting discussion with Ricky Gervais, about this sitcom, which was the first ever British sitcom to win a Golden Globe.

Gervais says that it was a totally new kind of humour when the show first appeared, and people weren't sure at first how to take it, which led to some unintentionally hilarious reviews in some of the newspapers, where critics had totally misunderstood the idea of the show.

By then end of the first series, people had "got the joke", said Gervais, and he spent some time after that trying to think of designing the second series in the way the audience would be expecting. But then he dismissed those thoughts from his mind, and concentrated solely on what he himself wanted to see in it. His motto is to "remember what the orchestral conductor does - to conduct the orchestra he needs to turn his back on the audience", which is fair enough.

Gervais says he's a big fan of US shows like Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm", but what he was doing with "The Office" was significantly different. Both shows feature excruciating, toe-curling scenes and incidents, but he says "The Office" is different because there's an unpleasant element of realism in it: David Brent really does look like a man who's having a slow mental breakdown.

The presenters and Gervais then discuss the "training day" episode, where David Brent and his staff are all participating in a "team-building" group session with the course-leader, and during which Brent interrupts the lecture, bringing out his guitar, and singing his own composition "Free Love Freeway", an action that's totally inappropriate on about 10 levels at once.

David Brent pulling out his guitar and singing one of his own compositions

during his branch's "Training Day": and the lecturer, sitting to Brent's left,

can only fold his arms and wait for Brent to finish. What madness !!!!!

About from David Brent's gradual personal breakdown and eventual recovery in which he jettisons his fantasy world, the Tim and Dawn love-story was also central to the series. Gervais says that humour and slapstick can't sustain a series just on their own. He points to the Marx Brothers' films: they found that they had to have more than just clowning - there had to be an underlying more serious story-line which the Marx Brothers could then weave their clowning around.

The presenters tonight ask Gervais why he thinks the show has been so popular in the US: it's British TV's most successful export over there. He doesn't really know but he says he thinks it's maybe because it represents universal themes, the boy-meets-girl of the Tim and Dawn love story, and the fantasies of untalented people like Brent to "become famous".

a scene from the US version of "The Office"

The US remake ran for 200 episodes, he says, compared to the UK one of about 20 or so, but this is a difference between the two markets, Gervais says. He would personally not want to get too involved in a series lasting that long, where relationships have to develop, and couples get married, with "wedding episodes" and then later they split up etc etc. He doesn't want to go there, he says. And who would blame him?

Fascinating stuff !!!!!

20:30 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we talk on the phone to Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children: Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11).

flashback to August: (left to right) Ed, Rosalind, Ali, Isaac, and Josie

pictured here on Ali's 46th birthday.

Josie and Rosalind had their first Pfizer coronavirus jab on Sunday. The NHS have started offering it to youngsters in the 12 to 16 year age group.

Ali says they are all mystified that the two girls haven't caught the virus, considering they both have friends or classmates that have had it. Ali wonders if the two girls had already had the virus at an early stage of the pandemic without realising it. But for myself, I wonder if it's because the girls have been sensible and kept all the rules about contact - perhaps they've been more sensible than some of their contemporaries. But we're not sure - the jury's still out on that one.

The family went shopping for Halloween goodies this week at their local Asda supermarket, but it seems there are supply issues: what madness !!!! They were only able to get a few cat's ears and fairy lights, plus some pumpkins they can carve. What madness !!!! [You've already said that in the line above - that's the sort of thing I call true madness !!!! - Ed]

Ed's got a business trip this week - to a conference of legal specialists in the Italian lakes region. He'll travel to Gatwick Airport on Wednesday, stay overnight, and then catch an early plane Thursday morning, coming back Saturday. He's doing his PCR coronavirus test tomorrow, apparently.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

21:30 We watch a bit of opera on the Sky Arts Channel, a production of Purcell's opera King Arthur, staged in Berlin.

Purcell's "King Arthur" is possibly our favourite opera, and it also seems to be very popular in Germany and Austria, for reasons we're not completely clear about. We see a bit of this Berlin production tonight, but it goes on way past our bedtime. We'll have to see it from the start another night.

Our favourite performance till now has been the Salzburg one from 2004. Like the Berlin version, in the Salzburg version too, the songs were sung in English, but the slapstick scenes between the songs were in German (with English subtitles).

The action takes place during the Anglo-Saxon invasion of King Arthur's Britain. In Salzburg the director decided to dress the Celtic, Christian "Britons" like allied soldiers of World War II, while the Anglo-Saxons looked more like Germans, without being out-and-out Nazis or the like, which is comforting. I have ancestors in both camps, like most British people: I mean, I have both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ancestors, although I don’t think any of them were Nazis as far as I know, which is a relief!

The slapstick scenes in Salzburg were pretty naughty, and, needless to say, Lois and I always enjoy watching the Anglo-Saxons sacrificing a bunch of topless virgins to their pagan gods - Thor, Freya and Odin etc.

Tremendous fun!

And best of all, it’s simulated only, which is nice - the "blurb" assures us that no virgins were harmed in the staging of the performance. We don't get the opportunity to see many human sacrifices in Prestbury nowadays, which is probably a good thing overall.